


A Flaw In My Code

by WakingNightmares



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dread doctors did a number on Theo, Evil Tara Raeken, Good Theo Raeken, Homeless Theo Raeken, Hurt Theo Raeken, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Memory Alteration, Non consensual experimentation, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Puppy Pack, Puppy Pack is going to fix Theo whether he wants them to or not, Sort of alpha Liam, Stockholm Syndrome, That tag will probably change from implied to outright at some point, Theo Raeken Needs a Hug, Theo isn't doing well, mentions of child death (previous experiments), or at least he's trying
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 12:30:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17425937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WakingNightmares/pseuds/WakingNightmares
Summary: Theo is a monster.He knows it, on some deep, instinctual level, as if it’s written into his very DNA.After the events of Season 6, as things quiet down, Theo starts wondering if he's truly the monster he thinks he is.Liam, Mason, Corey, Nolan, and Alec are hell bent on showing him he's not.





	A Flaw In My Code

Theo is a monster.

He knows it, on some deep, instinctual level, as if it’s written into his very DNA. There is no redemption for him; no salvation, no…

No _hope_.

And while he can’t be positive - _there are gaps, so many gaps_ -he’s pretty confident that he’s _always_ been a monster. Some of his earliest memories -memories of him and his parents, memories of him and Tara -are memories of things he knows were wrong. Things he should feel bad or evil for, but he doesn’t. Things he’s pretty sure he actually _enjoyed_.

So whatever is wrong with Theodore Marcus Raeken isn’t the fault of the Dread Doctors; it didn’t start in the moment that he shoved his sister off the bridge, and watched her slowly freeze to death ( _although, he’s willing to admit that that was the moment he embraced his monstrosity_ ). IThere was something wrong with him from the start; in the 'nature versus nurture' argument, he figured he was a pretty solid ‘ _win_ ’ for the nature folks.

The Dread Doctors simply perfected his monstrousness; took him from a normal, commonplace evil, and turned him into something _extraordinary_. Like that old X-Men movie, where the bad guy tells Wolverine that he was always an animal, that he just gave him claws.

That was what the Dread Doctors did for him; they remade his outside to match his inside.

And he _asked_ them for it; he was a willing participant at every stage of the game. It was _his_ idea to go after Scott and his pack. _His_ idea weaken the pack from the inside. _His_ idea to steal Scott’s power.

 _His_ idea to break the pack apart, to rip the bonds apart at the seams, and mangle them into something unrecognizable, something as dark and twisted and broken as he was, with no hope of ever being right again.

It was always _his_ choice; _his_ idea. A willing participant.

So he's not entirely sure why there's a small part of him screaming that he’s wrong. That this is all wrong, that that isn’t what happened. That things weren’t supposed to be like _this_ , that _he_ wasn’t supposed to be like this. A nagging voice in the back of his head telling him that he wasn’t born a monster, that he was turned into one?

And since his untimely return from the dead, he’s found that, more and more, he can’t tune the voice out. It used to be a simple thing, to turn the voice off, to tell it to shut up and go away, while he was working for the Dread Doctors. But ever since he crawled out of whatever hell Kira had sent him too - _a hell where Tara killed him, over and over, and over, a hundred, a thousand, a million times_ -he couldn’t shut it off. He couldn’t _ignore_ it anymore. It was screaming, constantly screaming, that this was wrong, all wrong, so _wrong_.

He’d fought it off, focusing on the Ghost Riders, focusing on the hunters, and the Anuk-ite, focusing on staying alive, on keeping others alive.

But now, the Ghost Riders are gone, the hunters are gone, the Anuk-ite is gone, and there is nothing else to focus on but that voice. And it’s just consistently getting louder, and louder.

_Driving him absolutely insane._

 

* * *

 

Liam barely bit back a groan, the scent at the door telling him someone was there moments before the doorbell actually ring. It wasn’t that there was _somebody_ at the door per se, but rather _who_ was at the door. Rubbing his eyes - _he’d been having difficulty focusing on the textbook he was supposed to be reading_ -he focused his hearing, listening in on the conversation below.

“Mrs. Geyer. Good to see you. Is Liam home?”

“Of course. He’s upstairs studying. Come on in, Sheriff.”

If he really focused, he was _almost_ positive he could hear the swishing of the door opening further against the wood floors. Sheriff Stilinski’s heavy boots stepping lightly onto the same floor.

“Sheriff –“

“Please, call me Noah.”

He could hear the sigh in his mother’s voice as she spoke again. “Alright. Noah, I understand that part of Liam feels the need to help you. To help Beacon Hills. And… Part of me couldn’t be more proud of him for that. But I also understand that he’s sixteen. That he’ll most likely have to repeat at least three of his classes this year, including tenth grade English.”

Liam released a bitter, anger-tinged sigh, his hands curling into fists. He’d hoped Ms. Martin wouldn’t say anything after he’d explained the pressure he was under. Apparently, he’d hoped wrong.

“I’m friends with Melissa, Noah. I know what being… _this_ … did to her son, and his grades. His social life. Hell, his life in general. I don’t want that happening to my son. Do we understand each other, Noah?”

He heard the Sheriff’s small chuckle. “Actually, Mrs. Geyer, I’m not here about that sort of business. Well, I mean, technically it involves one of his…” He could hear the hesitation in the older man’s voice, before he continued. “One of his pack.”

Liam was out of his bedroom, down the hall, and peering over the balcony before he was consciously aware of making the decision.

“What’s wrong, Sheriff?”

Part of him enjoyed the fact that his mother -still adjusting to knowing what he was, and what he could do -jumped a bit, and even the Sheriff took a moment to regain his composure before speaking.

“It’s about Theo.”

“Is he okay? What happened?” Liam demanded, moving down the stairs, ignoring the mixed emotions coursing through him.

Technically, Theo was a part of _his_ pack. Not Scott’s pack, but Liam’s pack -he’d made the call to invite Theo in, along with Corey, Nolan, and Alec swelling the numbers from two to a whopping six.

But, unlike the other four, Theo had made it abundantly clear to him: Liam could call him for help, and he’d come, and if he ran into trouble, he’d call Liam, but he wasn’t Liam responsibility; that he didn’t want Liam checking up on him, trying to protect him.

‘ _Babysitting_ ’. That was the word he’d used, saying that the _Baby Beta didn’t need to babysit him_. That he’d been taking care of himself for years, and didn’t see any reason for that to change.

“Physically, he’s fine, but uh… Well, my deputies are starting to talk about calling social services,” Sheriff Stilinski said quietly, pulling Liam from his recollections.

“Social services… why?” Liam asked in confusion.

“Because they _know_ he’s a teenager, Liam.”

“Uh… okay…?”

“And he’s living in his truck. Which means he’s homeless. And since they’ve ran his ID enough times to know it’s fake, they’ve got more than a good suspicion that he’s under age. Since protocol says we call social services about any homeless kid, and put him in foster care, I’m thinking we should probably find an alternative to putting the anti-social Chimera with sociopathic tendencies, and a habit of stabbing people, in a home with a bunch of kids,” The sheriff said pointedly.

Liam stared, dumbstruck for a moment. “He’s… been sleeping in his _truck_?”

The sheriff stared at him for a moment, before folding his arms across his chest. “You didn’t know.”

“Of course I didn’t know,” Liam said quietly, staring over Stilinski’s shoulder at his mother. “Obviously I would’ve…” He stopped, unsure of what he ‘obviously would have’.

Insisted that Theo stay with him? Fat chance; for all Scott had ‘anointed’ him as his stand-in Alpha while the True Alpha was away at college, Theo followed Liam’s directions when it _suited_ him, and ignored him when it didn’t. Mason thought it was because the older boy was half coyote -which weren’t typically pack animals -and with Liam not _actually_ being an Alpha, the werecoyote half was enough to override the werewolf’s innate sense of pack hierarchy.

Liam personally thought it was just because the Chimera enjoyed pissing him off, but the end result was the same.

Unlike Nolan, Corey, and Mason, who might’ve questioned, but typically followed his lead, Theo seemed hellbent on proving how little he needed the pack, or its interim Alpha.

Closing his eyes for a moment, scrubbing one hand through his hair as he released a sigh, he finally nodded.

“Alright. I’ll take care of it.”


End file.
